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At UN, Impending Visit by Libya's Gaddafi Fils Subject
of Whispers and Embarrassment, Comment Deferred
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
November 20, updated -- Libya's cash-fueled
rehabilitation from terrorist state into the mainstream moved a step
forward on Friday, when Moammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi
quietly slipped into the United
Nations for a 1 p.m. event in the Delegates' Dining room. Sources on
November 19 told Inner
City Press, "Gaddafi is coming." (In candor, they did not specify
father or son, mea culpa.) He
was not on the public agenda of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
But Ban met his father in January of this year in Addis Ababa.
Earlier
this month, Moammar Gaddafi signed cooperation agreement with his Belarusian
counter-part
Alexander Lukashenko "related to the economic, judicial and
cultural sectors." Both countries are known for their judicial systems.
"We hail Libya's position as a
non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council on
strengthening
its role as a guarantor of international peace and security. We will do
our
utmost to make you proud of our relations," Lukashenko was then quoted
in
his government-controlled press.
But at the UN since Libya
joined the Security Council, its representatives have virtually never
spoken to the press at the stakeout. Even during the Council's Africa
tour in June, Libya's Ambassador snubbed the few reporters on the trip.
Another country's Ambassador quoted to Inner City Press this Libyan
comment, that over 20 years of visits to Chad, their had been no
positive development. This same Ambassador opined to Inner City Press
that Libya had support the May 10 assault on Khartoum by the Chad-based
Justice and Equality Movement.
Update
of Friday afternoon -- Inner City
Press staked out the Delegates'
Entrance at 12:45. Already there were
Libya's
Ambassador and UN Security, who directed Inner City Press into the
otherwise empty
press pen. When Saif al-Islam Gaddafi arrived, Inner City Press asked a
question about what has been accomplished in Libya's ten months on the
Council.
"I'll answer later," Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi said. We're still
waiting.
UN's Ban and Libya's Gaddafi: discussing justice
systems?
In
the UN
Secretariat lobby there is a photo exhibition displaying and implicitly
praising Belarus' "Rays of Light." At an opening reception earlier
this week, in which the participants were strangely walled-off and
hidden from
view, UN officials heaped praise on the country's government. A passing
human
rights advocate stopped and rolled his eyes. What he told Inner City
Press is, for now, off the record.
Click here for Inner City
Press Nov. 7 debate on the war in Congo
Watch this site, and this Oct. 2 debate, on
UN, bailout, MDGs
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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